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TAHLEQUAH – Indigenous artists of the past, and today’s artists, are helping mold the future, an expert on curating artwork told an audience during a recent event in the capital city of the country’s largest Native tribe.
Dr. Miranda Belarde-Lewis, assistant professor at the University of Washington and a curator, spoke during the 50th annual Symposium on the American Indian at Northeastern University.
“Relationality is something we have latched onto, how native communities continue to make our systems of knowledge visible,” she said.
Tribal relationships with the land, water, ceremonies and stories are the nouns in the vocabulary she used, resulting in the objects people can see in museums. The verbs are people’s actions — how indigenous people deliberately engage with the world, through their people, places and ideas. Proper curating of art work is imperative in reflecting indigenous people’s culture now and helping it create change in the future.
Belarde-Lewis showed the photo of a robe created by an artist in Sitka, AK. A school of herring, depicted in gold, swim across a burgundy background. The fish are plentiful on the back of the road, diminishing to a narrow group of fish and finally a single fish as they approach the wearer’s neck.
The robe was created to protest the path to extinction facing the herring because of overfishing.
“Commercial fishing — they just scoop up everything in their nets,” Belarde-Lewis said. “This is showing how the herring would swim everywhere, but now they are getting channel into this little area.”
The fish population has been depleted because of man’s activities — including pollution and overfishing. The robe depicts the situation in an effort to depict this depletion and encourage change.
Belarde-Lewis praised the work of several artists, including Cherokees Roy Boney Jr. and Jane Osti.
Boney has the skill to say things creatively on a regular basis with meaning in his Daily Sketches.
“Colonization is a system because it works every day. It doesn’t take a day off,” she said.
Osti, a renowned potter, creates clay vessels and paddles “showing how long our systems of technology are unique to us.” The pottery isn’t necessarily flashy but it depicts tradition and objects that have been useful to Cherokee cooks for centuries.
“All the people who Jane has worked with, who Jane is mentoring, they will continue that technology,” Belarde-Lewis said.
She also spoke of artist collectives, saying they were working toward a future where all indigenous creatures can thrive side by side.
Some people are put off by believing art musicians are snobby institutions not relevant to most people. But curating according to Belarde-Lewis’ philosophy encourages communication and discussing art as it is socially relevant.
“Sometimes it’s as simple as pulling up a chair and talking to people,” she said.
Among the contemporary curators she praised was America Meredith, a Cherokee and editor of First American Art magazine.
She and other renowned curators have the wealth of experience needed for cultural preservation, Belarde-Lewis said. They can walk into a gallery and tell if something just isn’t right. They can work correct the exhibit, to make it convey the message needed in today’s society.
“The artists are leading the way. The curators are holding it and the curators are presenting their work to our people and the world,” she said.
She quoted Dr. Jolene Rickard on how curating tribal art relates to sovereignty: “Sovereignty is the border that shifts indigenous experience from a victimized stance to a strategic one. The recognition of this puts brains in our heads and muscle in our bones.”
The curator’s knowledge and discretion are imperative, Belarde-Lewis said.
“The artists are leading the way. The curators are holding it and the curators are presenting their work to our people and the world,” she said.
“There are a lot of things that are out of our control, but our choices are our own.”
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